COSBY: Comic ordered to stand trial on sex charge

Bill Cosby departs the Montgomery County Courthouse after a preliminary hearing, Tuesday, May 24, in Norristown, Pa. Cosby was ordered to stand trial on sexual assault charges after a hearing that hinged on a decade-old police report.

May 24 -- In a separate case, a Pennsylvania judge orders Cosby to stand trial in a sexual assault caseinvolving a Philadelphia woman. Huth's case is expected to proceed when the criminal case wraps up.

She called him “Mr. Cosby” and considered him a trusted friend and mentor.

But 20 minutes after Bill Cosby offered her three blue pills and told her to take them with the wine he had set out, Andrea Constand’s legs began to wobble “like jelly,” her eyes went blurry and her head began to throb.

Cosby helped her to a couch in his living room, where she later realized he violated her as she lay helplessly in a stupor, she told police in 2005.

On Tuesday, a Pennsylvania judge ordered the 78-year-old Cosby to stand trial on sexual assault charges on the strength of Constand’s decade-old police statement.

Cosby could get 10 years in prison if convicted in the case. A trial date was not immediately set.

They are the only criminal charges brought against the comedian out of the barrage of allegations that he drugged and molested dozens of women over five decades. He is free on $1 million bail.

One of the women who has come forward with allegations is Judy Huth of Canyon Lake. She filed a civil lawsuit in December 2014, contending Cosby sexually abused her in 1974 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles when she was 15.

The mansion was the site of Huth attorney Gloria Allred’s deposition of Hugh Hefner last week, a preliminary step before a suit is tried in court. Allred is also representing Constand and several dozen others who have accused the entertainer of sexual misconduct.

The Press-Enterprise does not normally identify people who say they were victims of sex crimes unless they agree to be named publicly, which Constand and Huth have done.

Cosby, who appeared in court looking less frail than he did when he was arrested five months ago, seemed unfazed by District Judge Elizabeth McHugh’s decision.

“Mr. Cosby is not guilty of any crime, and not one single fact presented by the commonwealth rebuts this truth,” his lawyers said in a statement afterward.

Allred called the judge’s ruling “fair” and said she was looking forward to the trial.

Cosby’s lawyers argued unsuccessfully that having a police officer read Constand’s statement instead of putting her on the stand would be third-hand testimony and would deprive him of his right to confront his accuser. But reading a police statement into the record is common practice at preliminary hearings in Pennsylvania.

In his own 2005 statement to police, excerpts of which were also read in court, Cosby said Constand never said “no” as he put his hand down her pants. He told police the pills were over-the-counter Benadryl that he takes to help him sleep.

Cosby attorney Brian McMonagle also questioned why Constand continued to see the comedian and even returned to the house to meet with him after the alleged assault.

In addition, the defense seized on discrepancies in the three police statements Constand gave, including her shifting memory of precisely when the encounter occurred.

Cosby settled with Constand for an undisclosed sum in 2006 after testifying behind closed doors about his extramarital affairs, his use of quaaludes to seduce women and his efforts to hide payments to former lovers from his wife.

But prosecutors reopened the criminal case last year after dozens of women leveled similar allegations and after Cosby’s sealed testimony in Constand’s lawsuit was made public.

Cosby’s lawyers are trying to get the case thrown out, arguing that a previous prosecutor made a binding promise a decade ago that the comic would never be charged.

He is also fighting defamation lawsuits across the country for allegedly branding his accusers liars and is trying to get his homeowner insurance to pay his legal bills.

The Associated Press and City News Service contributed to this report.

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